The present invention relates generally to a support system for dial-up Internet communications and specifically to a system tailored for wireless dial-up access from mobile telephones and personal data organizers.
Three capabilities have become available to improve communication and data availability in recent historyxe2x80x94the mobile telephone, the personal data assistant and the Internet. The mobile telephone has been expanding its influence and services. Such expanded services include incorporating pager functions, call waiting, caller ID and more recently a screen for a mobile telephone to allow visual communication either of text or graphics. The mobile telephone industry has developed a wireless application protocol (WAP) which supports integration of digital data and a wireless modem in a mobile telephone.
The personal data assistant (PDA) is becoming vital to the typical professional and useful to anyone. The PDA, while coming in various sizes, incorporates applications for addresses, schedules, to do lists, expenses and other personal services. Communication is typically through a small screen and either a touch pad or small keyboard. While common PDA""s have black and white screens, trends are leading toward color screens. These two devices, the mobile phone and the PDA, seem to be moving toward an extended handheld unit which will keep personal applications close to the user and allow the user to connect to the world via a wireless connection.
The Internet provides a wide variety of data sources and capabilities. The Internet has emerged as a global communications medium enabling millions of people to share information and conduct business electronically. Its main communication route has been visual, although as the desktops, the current primary means of accessing the Internet, become multi sensory Internet communications will shift that way too. The Internet is now supplying music like CD""s and delivering messages like an answering machine. The main assets of the Internet are the ability to access a wide variety of information and the power of the search engines to find such information. The main drawback of the Internet has been the need to be at a connected computer to use the Internet. Only now are wireless modems for portable computers coming into general availability, but these currently require more than the mobile telephone infrastructure to function reliably. Most of the Internet Web resources are formatted for personnel desktop or laptop computer access. The resolution of the monitor and/or liquid crystal display (LCD) ranges from 640xc3x97480 to 1600xc3x971200 pixels. The personnel computer can be equipped with a large capacity hard disk drive and a sizeable random access memory (up to 614 Megabytes). The window of each html web page is widely opened and the memory size for a page is large (up to a few Megabytes). The Internet servers for desktop users typically assume that the connection to the desktop has a high bandwidth. The bandwidth requirements for the Internet have been pushing communications technology to provide ever more capable paths to the desktop.
Beginning efforts have been made to utilize extended mobile phones with visual screens to access the Internet. However, current wireless web surfing suffers from the slow wireless data rates, the possible intermittent nature of wireless connectivity, the long down-load time for graphic intensive pages, the cost of waiting for information to cross the Internet as the Internet becomes more congested, and from an inadequate graphical user interface. What is needed is a way to have a handheld mobile web browser appear to be operating at such a high data rate with such a quick response that it does not highlight the Internet traffic congestion. Fast updates of information, a user friendly graphical user interface and web pages tailored for the small screens must be available in handheld units.
The system needed to support mobile Internet access from handheld units centers around two foci, speed and special content. Both of these are served by placing the contents that the user desires as physically close to the user""s server as possible. Speed is needed to adapt to the cost structure and low bandwidth of wireless communication and the limitations of the handheld unit screens. Special content is needed to present extensive information in readily interpreted formats that complement the speed services. Speed services can be located either in the handheld unit or in a custom server for mobile handheld net surfing.
One feature of the novel system is an ability, built into the handheld unit, to create search requests to retrieve precisely the information wanted from the network. Such search requests augment the wide ranging search facility already available and guide the user to precisely defining a need so that the number of hits for that request is limited. Another feature in the handheld unit is a quick connect service, a service that identifies the user and his authorization as the handheld unit is connecting and the server is providing the first connection. Another feature in the handheld unit is the ability to interpret tags that allow the handheld unit to download only changing data and maintain static data in the local memory. Current applications require that the entire screen be downloaded.
Speed also implies that the server, the main portal to the Internet has specialized capabilities. One of these capabilities is an ability to convert desktop formatted pages to mobile handheld screen format. This may be a straight conversion of one page to a number of screens or a tailored conversion approved by the information provider. Another capability is a means to access screens tailored for the handheld unit whether the screens are held at the server or on the Internet. Another server capability is communication services that will assure that each transmission is quantified to fill an entire screen in the handheld unit and that maintain a running status that can ride through a wireless service outage. Major improvement in speed comes about because the server is able to access an extensive database filled with information that has been selected based on the user""s historical usage and projected needs. Such a database avoids the need to access the full Internet to send data to the handheld unit. The database is updated in real time as the page-based data is updated for the rest of the Internet. A search engine that can distinguish between searches that need to use the Internet and searches that can be centered on the database improves the speed of interaction.
The features that support special content for the handheld mobile user include capabilities to allow content providers to submit updates to their desktop web pages and have that update be formatted both for the desktop and for the handheld screen. The capabilities built into these utilities include the ability to tag dynamic fields, distinguishing them from the static fields in the pages, and reformat the pages to fit on the majority of handheld screens. Similarly, for those information providers who choose not to provide handheld screens on the Internet, but who provide pre-approval, fast custom conversion engines are supplied to allow the information to be accessed as screens with greater facility. Grouping of desirable information and holding that information in the most accessible storage media is a special content of special value to the user. The ability to convert the general desktop web page to a handheld format is provided, but its use is conditioned on the handheld user""s explicit request for the conversion. The ability to apply artificial intelligence techniques to the update of information continues the improvement after a user initially subscribes.